The 43-year-old French director, writer and actor Michel Blanc, who is bald, diminutive and oddly shaped, is frequently called the French Woody Allen. Given how ecstatic the French are about Allen, it is perhaps time the Americans repaid the favor. With the national release in July of his inventive comedy, "Grosse Fatigue," Blanc is front and center. Born in 1952 in Courbevoie, France, Blanc developed his sharp comic timing and gift for mimicry and farce in the French cafe theater group Equipe du Splendid.

One might think, given the experience and talent of those involved, that someone would have noticed that " Demi-soeur " was a recipe for disaster: A comedy about a mentally disabled person, while not necessarily a bad idea, is extremely tricky territory. Unfortunately, French actress-writer-director Josiane Balasko plunges in with all the finesse of a hopped-up Pollyanna, her simplistic interpretation of an impaired sexagenarian coming close to outright parody; vet comic thesp Michel...

The hollow face, wispy frame and apprehensive eyes of the French comic actor Michel Blanc--writer-director-star of "Grosse Fatigue"--remind you of Woody Allen or Wally Shawn on their worst days. Blanc is a beleaguered Gallic everyman, an eternal citizen of the Land of Defeat. He was the quintessential sad-eyed voyeur in Patrice Lecomte's "M. Hire," the ultimate puppet in Bertrand Blier's "Menage." There are depths in Blanc we don't always see--as Claude Berri showed, casting him as the principled postwar radical...

Mimi-Siku, the Amazonian boy in Paris played by Ludwig Briand in "Little Indian, Big City," is a modern movie version of all those noble savages and wild boys popular in children's books and movies since Rudyard Kipling invented Mowgli, the wolf boy of "The Jungle Books." As Mimi climbs the Eiffel Tower in his loincloth, canoes down the Seine or immobilizes flies, pigeons and obnoxious adults with his darts and blowpipe, he becomes another fairy-tale primitive, triumphing over the...

One might think, given the experience and talent of those involved, that someone would have noticed that " Demi-soeur " was a recipe for disaster: A comedy about a mentally disabled person, while not necessarily a bad idea, is extremely tricky territory. Unfortunately, French actress-writer-director Josiane Balasko plunges in with all the finesse of a hopped-up Pollyanna, her simplistic interpretation of an impaired sexagenarian coming close to outright parody; vet comic thesp Michel...

The 43-year-old French director, writer and actor Michel Blanc, who is bald, diminutive and oddly shaped, is frequently called the French Woody Allen. Given how ecstatic the French are about Allen, it is perhaps time the Americans repaid the favor. With the national release in July of his inventive comedy, "Grosse Fatigue," Blanc is front and center. Born in 1952 in Courbevoie, France, Blanc developed his sharp comic timing and gift for mimicry and farce in the French cafe theater group Equipe du Splendid.

Adapted from a novel by Georges Simenon, Patrice Leconte's French film "Monsieur Hire" is a haunting, dark love story in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and Robert Rossen's "Lilith." It's the sort of boy-meets-girl movie in which the boy is a sociopathic misfit, the girl is a conniving manipulator and there is no more possibility of living happily ever after than there is of pigs taking wing. And yet the effect is one of swooning romance, made...

The hollow face, wispy frame and apprehensive eyes of the French comic actor Michel Blanc--writer-director-star of "Grosse Fatigue"--remind you of Woody Allen or Wally Shawn on their worst days. Blanc is a beleaguered Gallic everyman, an eternal citizen of the Land of Defeat. He was the quintessential sad-eyed voyeur in Patrice Lecomte's "M. Hire," the ultimate puppet in Bertrand Blier's "Menage." There are depths in Blanc we don't always see--as Claude Berri showed, casting him as the principled postwar radical...

Mimi-Siku, the Amazonian boy in Paris played by Ludwig Briand in "Little Indian, Big City," is a modern movie version of all those noble savages and wild boys popular in children's books and movies since Rudyard Kipling invented Mowgli, the wolf boy of "The Jungle Books." As Mimi climbs the Eiffel Tower in his loincloth, canoes down the Seine or immobilizes flies, pigeons and obnoxious adults with his darts and blowpipe, he becomes another fairy-tale primitive, triumphing over the...

From such quirky childhood memories as knitted woolen swimming trunks-with dangling pompons, no less-and visits to a lady barber, Patrice Leconte has fashioned a film that is winning worldwide acclaim. Yet, even while making "The Hairdresser's Husband," the French writer-director thought no one would want to see a movie about a man who fulfills his childhood dream of marrying a hairdresser and living with her in sensuous bliss. "I thought maybe 20 people would be interested in this movie, counting my...

From such quirky childhood memories as knitted woolen swimming trunks-with dangling pompons, no less-and visits to a lady barber, Patrice Leconte has fashioned a film that is winning worldwide acclaim. Yet, even while making "The Hairdresser's Husband," the French writer-director thought no one would want to see a movie about a man who fulfills his childhood dream of marrying a hairdresser and living with her in sensuous bliss. "I thought maybe 20 people would be interested in this movie, counting my...

Adapted from a novel by Georges Simenon, Patrice Leconte's French film "Monsieur Hire" is a haunting, dark love story in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and Robert Rossen's "Lilith." It's the sort of boy-meets-girl movie in which the boy is a sociopathic misfit, the girl is a conniving manipulator and there is no more possibility of living happily ever after than there is of pigs taking wing. And yet the effect is one of swooning romance, made...

"Your exact skills escape me," says a Paris lawyer's starchy assistant, scanning the resume handed to her by the protagonist of Andre Techine's "The Girl on the Train." The young woman looking for a job is like a million others, anywhere — open, curious, half-formed, dangerously vulnerable to outside forces as well as impulses of her own. What would make someone like young Jeanne, played by Emilie Dequenne (who starred in the Dardenne brothers' lovely...

'THE WITNESSES' . 1/2 Spanning a year beginning in the summer of 1984, "The Witnesses" ("Les Temoins") offers the considerable satisfaction of a beautifully acted ensemble piece built on the foundation of a serious subject -- the dawn of the AIDS crisis -- handled just so. A typical American studio treatment of the same story wouldn't leave anything to chance, any rock of pathos unturned, any opportunity for Laughter and Tears and painful human...

Repeated attempts to mate the British and French cinemas, in order to yield an ideal "eurofilm" without need of subtitles to reach the crucial American audience, have so far chiefly produced bizarre, nonfunctional hybrids-movies like "The King's Whore" and "Torrents of Spring" that are barely glimpsed outside of film festivals. "The Favor, the Watch and the Very Big Fish," filmed in Paris by British writer-director Ben Lewin, doesn`t break the pattern, though it does try a...